Always Historicize!

Abstract

In recent years, marketing history has emerged as a major research stream. Impressive and welcome though these historical studies are, they are predicatedon traditional research perspectives. History, however, is embroiled in a seriou sepistemological crisis, precipitated by the advent of postmodernism. Marketers, therefore, are becoming more historically minded at a time when accepted historical approaches are under mounting attack and the discipline is dissolving into a state of scholarly civil war. Indeed, the cutting edge of contemporary historical scholarship is found in the field of literary criticism, where historicism is replacing deconstructionas the method of the moment. This article examines the postmodern critique of(marketing) history, explains the literary theorists’ textual alternative, provides a worked example of postmodern historicism and explicates the methodological implications for marketing research.